1073 



rich countries, from south to north, from traditional to industrial 

 societies. Advanced industrial societies like those in Europe and the 

 United States, he said, have recruited manpower to perform what he 

 tei;^ed "the dirty work of society." Through the workings of the 

 social process, particularly through education, the descendants of these 

 immigrants in America "have regularly come to advance themselves." 

 That was the background of most Americans, including his own : "the 

 products of people — brainy people, obviously — who have been drained 

 away from poorer sections of the world." "If there had been no brain 

 drain in the past," Dr. Frankel declared, "we wouldn't be here, and 

 the country wouldn't be what it is today. So it is not in this sense a 

 new problem." ^^ 



TRENDS IN 19TH AND EARLY 20TH CENTURY AMERICAN IMMIGRATION 



Perhaps Emma Lazarus' inscription on the Statue of Liberty de- 

 scribes as well as any historical source the general character of Ameri- 

 can immigration prior to the 1920's: "Give me your tired, your 

 poor, your huddled masses . . . the wretched refuse of your teeming 

 shore . . . the homeless, tempest-tost. . . ." For the immigrants of this 

 period were by and large the economically poor, the socially outcast, 

 and the politically deprived of Europe. And, they were overwhelm- 

 ingly unskilled, that is, unskilled laborers as distinct from those who 

 in recent decades would qualify as professional and technical 

 workers. ^'^ As late as 1907-23, only 2.6 percent of 6,905,000 immigrants 

 to the United States were in professional categories, an average of 



Ts Proceedings of Workshop on the Talents and Skills (October 1966), p. 78. Dr. FrankeTs 

 correlation of immigration with America's greatness reflected thoughts expressed by 

 ■another New Yorker of a much earlier time, William Henry Seward. As a New York 

 State Senator, a two-term Governor of New York, a U.S. Senator from New York for a 

 decade, and Secretary of State during the Lincoln-Johnson Administrations, Seward ob- 

 served four decades of American growth and well understood the role of immigration In 

 that growth. Immigration was a basic Ingredient in his philosophy of American expan- 

 sionism : It provided free labor to contain the expanding slavocracy of the South and to 

 build what he termed the "American empire." To Seward, immigration was "an Im- 

 portant and rapidly-increasing element of national strength and greatness." He en- 

 couraged immigration as farsighted and humane, and "liberal naturalization" as "an 

 element of empire." One of the greatest sources of "unappropriated wealth" to the 

 Nation, he said, was the restless stream of immigrants, the "builders of nations," who 

 were to provide the free labor for the developing American economy. According to Seward, 

 "labor is constantly in demand" and the "incalculable surplus labor of the European 

 states." together with European investment capital, brought wealth to the Nation and 

 thus constitute "an element of national greatness." To develop this potential for empire 

 to the fullest, he declared, "requires that we welcome immigrants among ourselves, or 

 speed them on their way to a western destination." In Seward's social philosophy immigra- 

 tion, imperial greatness, civilization, and prosress were inter-related. To him, immigration 

 and expansion were "the main and inseparable elements of civilization on the American 

 continent" and "all attempts will fail to suppress or stifle either of these invigorating 

 forces." These were not idle philosophical speculations ; Seward as Secretary of State 

 pressed vigorously for the conclusion of naturalization treaties with the various European 

 states during the post-Civil War period, and remarked in an Instruction to the American 

 Minister at Paris, then negotiating with the French for such a treaty, what was the 

 core of his philosophy of immigration : "Freedom of emigration and of naturaliz.ition Is 

 one of the greatest elements of mo-iern progress and civilization." (.Joseph G. Whe'an, 

 William Henry Seward, Expansionist (Rochester, N.Y. : University of Rochester, 1959), 

 pp. 24-27. Unpublished doctoral dissertation.) 



"^ Dr. Franklin P. Huddle, the Director of this research series on science and diplomacy, 

 evprpssed views on the matter of "unskilled" immigrants that deserve snecial attention. He 

 wrote : "I think a distinction is needed here. The 19th Century immigrants were not so 

 much unskilled as possessed of non-relevant skills. Granted they were not persons of 

 letters. But the peasant skills in European agriculture were inappropriate to American 

 ecology and abundance of land, as well as the emphasis on capital-intensive rather than 

 labor-intensive agricultTire. Similarly, European industry emphasized labor-intensive prac- 

 tices. Immigrants skilled in iron founding, shoe-making, and clothing manufacture 

 according to European practice had to learn new kinds of skill here. In these same trades. 

 Some immigrants, to be sure, may have been marginal labor. But the initiative required 

 to emigrate provided a kind of test of superiority, especially when coupled with the push 

 factor of a highly rigid socio-economic hierarchy precluding upward mobility in their 

 homeland, against which the more dynamic members were likely to rebel." 



